CCG 200th "Anniversary" Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Color Combos Galore 200th "Anniversary" Blog Hop! We hope by visiting the CCG Design Team members' blogs, you will be able to pick up some fun tips and techniques. Many of the team members will be offering prizes, so you will want to visit all of the blogs to increase your chances of winning some fun scrappy stuff. We are also offering a chance at a Guest Designer spot for the month of August if you visit all of the blogs in our Blog Hop and participate in Challenge 200 by uploading your project to the CCG Gallery. It's so fun to get the colors before everyone else! Plus, who doesn't love to see their name in lights! The deadline for the chance to win these prizes is one week from today, Sunday, July 24, EST.

If this is your first stop at our Blog Hop, you'll want to start at Bente Fagerberg's blog, and follow the hop in order so you don't miss anyone. If you've been hopping in order, your next stop is Eva Pizarro.

Once you have visited all the blogs and uploaded a project to the CCG Gallery using Challenge 200, please make sure you check in at the Blog Hop discussion in the Special Announcements Forum at CCG. We will choose our August Guest Designer from that thread. Individual DT members will be choosing winners for the prizes they are offering. Good luck, and we hope you'll enjoy our blog hop!

CCG has a very talented team of designers, and they will be sharing some amazing techniques. I don't consider myself much of a "technique" scrapper but rather a storyteller, so instead, I thought I'd share some of my favorite tips--ones that I use a lot that help me on virtually every page I made, including this page I made for Challenge 200:

Favorite Tip #1 - You may not know that I scrap 8 x 8, which means I have to really plan my layouts carefully so that everything fits. One thing that helps me is wax paper! I use wax paper to see if my title fits where I want it to. I just adhere my title letters on the wax paper, and I can move my title (or other sticky elements) around my page until I get it just where I want it.

Favorite Tip #2 - I just recently figured this one out. I used to photograph my layouts as soon as I was finished with them, but I recently realized that waiting until the next day allows me to see my page through "fresh eyes" and I almost always add something to it that makes it feel more "complete." On this particular layout, what I added were the Ranger Enamel Accents to the letter stickers and the Ranger Perfect Pearls to the scallops on the envelope, and believe it or not, I didn't originally have that doily stamp on the envelope. I sort of knew I needed something there, but it didn't come to me until the next day when I had another look. I can't imagine my page without that detail.

Favorite Tip #3 - Before you toss the edge of the patterned paper away, look closely at it. You know, the part that has the manufacturer’s name, logo, paper line, and bar code? Sometimes, this disposable bit of paper might be just the perfect thing for your layout. That "Haute Cuisine" on the side came from the tear strip on a Teresa Collins paper. Pay attention to the names of the papers or collection names, which might help you tell our story. My very favorite tear strips are on Cosmo Cricket's papers--you know, the ones that say "flip for fun" or "but wait, there's more," and so forth. I use those a lot for when I use hidden journaling (and I have to do that a lot because sometimes there's just not enough room on an 8 x 8 page for my story).

Favorite Tip #4 - Tell a story. It doesn't have to be long and drawn out, though it's nice to write a detailed narrative sometimes. But it's important to get all the little bits and pieces of your life down on paper. Think about it: Some day we're going to look back on all these hundreds--or thousands--of pages we've made, and it's the stories that are going to make us smile more than the beautiful products we used on our pages. As I've evolved over the ten years I've been scrapping, the "artistic" side of scrapping has become more important and interesting and fun to me (not to mention, the array of wonderful products has become so irresistible to use), and sometimes the design I have in mind doesn't allow for the lengthy journaling I enjoy to fit on my small canvas, so in those cases, I'll hide my journaling--in a pocket or on the back of my page. It might seem odd that I scrapped pictures of my mom's ugly meatloaf (she wouldn't let me photograph her holding the pan because she didn't have on makeup), but it's a little piece of my life I wanted to document, and some day when I'm old and maybe my mom won't be around anymore, I can look at this page and remember how she used to make meatloaf for me. And I'll smile.

Okay, so I lied. I do have two little techniques to share, and these are more for newbies:

Technique #1 - About the distressed edges (and I'm almost embarrassed to share this because so many on the CCG team are masters at distressing--and I can't wait to read their blog entries in hopes they'll share their secrets), I used a Zutter Distrezz-It-All. It's a handy little electric contraption that allows you to run your paper across it and it does the distressing for you, easy-peasy!

Technique #2 - Heat embossing. If you're chicken to try it, don't be. I know I was for a long time, and the first time I tried it, it worked perfectly and I was so surprised and so irritated that I hadn't tried it before! All you need is a stamp, an embossing stamp pad, embossing powder, and an embossing gun. Just ink your stamp with the embossing ink and stamp your image--it'll be clear. Then sprinkle the embossing powder over your stamped image and tap off the excess (I do it on a sheet of paper so I can easily dump it back into the container). Then heat it with your embossing gun, and the image magically turns into the wonderful raised, shiny embossed image! Couldn't be easier!

Thank you for hopping onto my blog today. I hope you picked up a little something from reading what I shared. Please leave a comment for a chance to win a little surprise of scrappy goodies from my stash. Your next stop is Eva's blog...